5 Key Areas of FCA Focus in 2025 for Wholesale Firms

As a wholesale firm, it’s crucial to stay ahead of regulatory changes.  The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s), the FCA's Annual Work Programme for 2025/26 highlights several areas you should focus on:

1. Improving Transparency in Financial Markets

New transparency regimes for bonds and derivatives are set to elevate standards expected of trading venues and recognised investment exchanges.

The introduction of a consolidated tape for fixed income and equity data. With the tender process now well under way. The expectation is that a big industry data vendor will likely win the contract. FCA has committed to ensuring that this information is made available in a cost-effective way

2. Prospectus

FCA will introduce a new prospectus regime will be introduced in 2025/26. This initiative will materially increase thresholds for issuing a prospectus and provide a degree of protection for forward-looking statements to encourage more disclosures. The intention is to allow smaller investors to engage more actively in the securities markets.

Public Offer Platforms (POPs) will allow firms to raise capital without requiring a prospectus with a POP gatekeeper overseeing the process. The aim is to widen the investor pool to retail investors and as such access to Ombudsman and Compensation Schemes are amongst the proposals.

3. Capital requirements for specialised trading firms

Following recent work carried out by the FCA and given recent issues in the Nickel markets. FCA intends to accelerate its review of capital requirements for specialised trading firms. We’re expecting the focus to be around Principal Trading Firms due to their role in liquidity provision and price formation.

4. A New Commodity Derivatives Regime

As anticipated FCA has committed to simplifying requirements around commodity position limits. This change aims to provide venues greater visibility of over the counter (OTC) derivative positions.

5. Simplifying Capital Markets Rules

Continuing its efforts from the Wholesale Markets Review, FCA is continuing to implement changes aimed at simplifying capital markets rules. Their focus will be particularly on improvements within the securitisation market as well as the simplification of derivatives rules. These changes are expected to promote efficiency and ease of compliance for market participants.

Leaman Crellin has identified the new initiatives FCA has planned for 2025/26 which may also apply to your firm, you can read that article here